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Saturday, May 25, 2013

Tarek Fatah: Time To Do Away With Doctrine Of Jihad

We need more Muslims like Canadian writer and anti-jihadist Tarek Fatah. His latest commentary regarding the butchers of Woolwich is a must read. He, in essence, is calling for the modernization of Islam by renouncing the doctrine of "jihad" in all its manifestations.

When buses and trains exploded on 7/7 in London, the objective of the suicide bombers was to sow fear and terror in the very soul of the British people.

In that the jihadis were successful.

One would have expected the British authorities to not just hunt down the terrorists, but also to fight the cancer of Islamism that lies at the ideological roots of jihadi terrorism. Instead, successive governments in London have tried to pussyfoot around the challenge, hoping the jihadi terrorists and their ideology would melt away with time as Downing Street funded so-called "moderate" Muslim groups and "former" extremists to do the government's bidding.

As the brutal hacking death of a British soldier by two fearless jihadis chanting "Allah O Akbar" has shown, this strategy has failed. Muslims who see the West as the enemy and seek its destruction have become even more emboldened by the lack of resolve, which they see as cowardice. In addition, jihadis in the U.K. are no longer restricted to the second generation Pakistani Britons; they now come from places as far apart as Chechnya and Nigeria.

While the run-of-the-mill jihadi terror attack relies on suicide bombers and remote-controlled improvised explosive devices, Wednesday's attack came straight from medieval times, with the two jihadis using knives and cleavers to hack away at the victim and then beheading him. If this was not enough, they played to the gallery, demanding they be filmed as they chatted with passers-by, proudly defending their actions and promising more attacks on non-Muslims to come.

He also blasts mainstream Islamic voices for failing to condemn jihad, describing how some did not even bother to mention Islam in their condemnation.

While ordinary Britons and non-Muslims around the world are bewildered by these never-ending acts of terrorism, the response of the leaders of the Islamic community is the tired old cliche -- Islam is a religion of peace, and jihad is simply an "inner struggle."

The fact these terrorists are motivated by one powerful belief -- the doctrine of armed jihad against the "kuffar" (non-Muslims) -- is disingenuously denied by Islamic clerics and leaders.